Welcome to the blog of the California Teachers Empowerment Network. CTEN is a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the public at large with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Dear Colleague,

As most of you are back to work now, we sincerely hope
that you had an enjoyable summer and that the always busy start of a new school
year has been smooth sailing.

CTEN is again participating in National Employee Freedom
Week which began August 16th and runs through August 22nd.
NEFW is a national campaign whose purpose is to let employees know that they
have the freedom to opt out of their union and become agency-fee payers or
religious/conscientious objectors. This year 99 organizations in 42 states are
participating. An important objective is to reach the 39.2 percent of those in
union households nationwide who are unaware they can opt-out of union
membership without losing their job or any other penalty. For more information,
please visit the NEFW website – http://employeefreedomweek.com/For info specific to teachers in California,
go to http://www.ctenhome.org/how-to-opt-out-teachers-union-nea-cta-aft-cft.html

And talking about employee freedom, CTEN board member Rebecca Friedrichs had
an interview on the subject with the Washington Post’s Emma Brown. While the
title of piece – “Two teachers explain why they want to take down their union”
– is untruthful, the Q&A is worthwhile. (Friedrichs et al v CTA is not about destroying CTA, but rather an
attempt to make dues-paying optional) In any event, near the end of the
interview, Friedrichs was asked, “What’s the teachers’ lounge like for
you these days? How are you treated?” Her response:

Lest there be any confusion about the Friedrichs case and Bain v CTA, a related lawsuit, CTEN and the Association of American
Educators are cosponsoring an informational event on September 27th
in Long Beach. There will be a panel discussion featuring a lawyer and
plaintiff from each case. Details will be forthcoming.

From our friends at EdSource:

EdSource Today is
looking for teachers who have signed up to receive ETS training to become
Smarter Balanced test scorers for a story about the tests and how districts are
using them. If you have received (or will receive) this training, please
contact reporter Theresa Harrington in Northern California at 510-433-0421 ext.
142 or tharrington@edsource or
reporter Sarah Tully in Southern California at stully@edsource.org

Have you ever felt that a professional development class you
were taking was a waste of time? If you are like me, you have had many such
experiences. And now TNTP has come out with a study that looked closely at
teacher development in three large school districts and one charter school
network. The results are not pretty; TNTP found that despite school
systems making a massive and laudable investment in teacher improvement—far larger
than most people realize,

… most
teachers do not appear to improve substantially from year to year….

… no
evidence that any particular kind or amount of professional development
consistently helps teachers improve.

School
systems are failing to help teachers understand how to improve—or even
that they have room to improve at all.

Math teacher and
Common Core expert Barry Garelick has in interesting piece posted on the
Heartland Institute website. “Pernicious Egalitarianism Shrinks 8th Grade
Algebra Programs” delves into the fact that 8th graders will no
longer be taking algebra in California due to the Common Core State Standards.
Garelick states,

Algebra will now be
offered only in high school. Of course, it is a mistake to allow students to
take algebra if they are not prepared for it. To succeed in algebra, students
must have already achieved mastery of fractions, percentages, decimals, ratios,
and negative numbers and be able to solve a variety of word problems. But if a student
is qualified to take algebra in 8th grade and would do well in it, why not give
the child that opportunity?

The New York Times’ Mokoto Rich recently penned “Teacher Shortages Spur a Nationwide Hiring
Scramble (Credentials Optional)” the latest entry in the alleged teacher
shortfall. While all the usual suspects repeat the shortage meme as gospel,
there really is not much truth to it. As Mike Antonucci writes,

In the years leading
up to the recession, reports of teacher shortages were constantly in the news.
In response, America added 140,000 teachers to the workforce. The recession
hit, and 63,000 of those teachers disappeared – either through direct layoffs,
or attrition when veteran teachers retired.

How can there be a
teacher shortage when 63,000 recently working teachers are still out there?

The National Council
on Teacher Quality blows up another long-standing myth, that of the “5 year and
out” teacher myth.

The Beginning
Teacher Longitudinal Study follows the same group of teachers for five
years, regardless of where they live—even if they leave a state. The headline
finding was that only 17 percent of new teachers leave after the first four
years (the gray areas in the graph below). That's a far cry from the
oft-repeated education myth that 50 percent of teachers leave within their
first five years.

Former teacher and
union leader Doug Tuthill has written an article in which he refutes the
anti-choice union talking points and claims that “School choice is good for
teachers, too.”

Florida also now has more than 40,000
teachers who do not work for school districts. Nearly 14,000 of them work in
charter schools, which surpasses the public school teaching workforce in nine
other states. At the nonprofit I lead, we routinely hear stories of teachers
who migrate from district schools to private schools. They’re choosing these
options for the same reason parents are—because they offer a better fit for
their individual needs.

In any event, if you enjoy these letters and find them
informative, please pass them along to your colleagues. We know that there are
many independent-minded teachers in California who are looking for alternative
sources of information. Many thanks, as always, for your interest and support.